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I was going to share the very first Listener Spotlight, but I’m saving that for next week.

(And if you want to be featured in a Listener Spotlight, just leave a rating and review over on iTunes, or the Apple Podcast app, and then email me the content of your review, and let me know specifically how Live Creative Now has made a difference in your life. That’s it!

If I pick you for a Listener Spotlight, we’ll have a relaxed, fun conversation, and the recording of our conversation will be part of a future episode!)

Meanwhile, on with today’s Reality of Summer Trips episode…

Home from Buffalo, While Packing for Jazz Camp

I wanted to write a short note, in between trips, to remind you that YES, the struggle is real (as Tracey Mahon Elliott would say. 😉 )

EVEN when you practice “Think tiny & daily.”

EVEN when you practice “There is no wrong.”

EVEN when you practice “Think process, not product.”

I was off in Buffalo at a creativity conference, where my days were programmed from 8am til late-late at night.

Then I spent 2 days with my mastermind coach and co-mastermind buddy in Niagara on the Lake.

Then in transit back home to the West Coast (always discombobulating).

Then scrambling to catch up with urgent matters and PACK, to head into the woods for Jazz Camp West, where I will once again be programmed from 8am til late-late at night, for 8 days.

And guess what? Because my regular routine has fallen off a cliff, I have NOT been doing my morning doodles.

EVEN THOUGH it would seem to be simple enough to take 2 minutes and doodle on the freakin’ back of an envelope, right?

EVEN THOUGH I was a captive audience on an airplane for hours on end, where you would think I could have doodled for at least 2 minutes, right?

Well, wrong.

So I have a couple of options.

I could beat myself up. Moan about what a loser I am, and what a terrible model I am to my readers and followers.

Listeners Wanted!

Has the Live Creative Now podcast made a difference in your life? Would you like to be featured on the podcast?

I want to start sharing listener stories, so if you have a story of how listening to the podcast has changed your life for the better in some way — big or small — I want to feature you in a Listener Spotlight.

Here’s how it works:

1. Just log into iTunes and leave a rating and review. (If you don’t know how to do that, you’ll find step-by-step instructions at livecreativenow.com/itunes-review).

2. Then copy and paste what you wrote in your review into an email, and send it to me, along with why you want to be featured in a Listener Spotlight. How has Live Creative Now made a difference in your life? You can email me at livecreativenow.com/contact.

That’s it!

If I pick you for a Listener Spotlight, we’ll have a relaxed, fun conversation, and the recording of our conversation will be part of a future episode! How cool is that?

Want a creative kick start?
Check out my book!

What would change for you if you could totally revel in the joy of creating? You CAN, with The Creative Sandbox Way!

5 reasons why creative play is good for you, AND for the world (it’s neuroscience, baby!)

Why “I’m not creative” is always a lie, and how to bust it.

How to turn creative blocks into friends.

AND you’ll get creating right in the book itself.

“It’s one part field guide, one part creative practice—and I loved it. The Creative Sandbox Way is an adventure packaged as a book.”

~Chris Guillebeau
NYT best-selling author of The Happiness of Pursuit and The $100 Startup

Hear ye, hear ye! This is to serve as official notice that all links to anything for sale, be it books or courses, are likely to be affiliate links. What this means is that if you click through said links and make a purchase, although it won’t affect the price that you pay, a few coins will jangle into my coffers, enabling me to buy a packet of hard gluten-free biscuits to feed myself and my husband for another day, or perhaps a pen with which to create some artwork. Or perhaps they will contribute toward paying a fraction of my web hosting bill, so that this blog and podcast can continue to exist. Thank you kindly for your attention.

Thanks for Listening!

Thanks so much for joining me this week. Have some feedback you’d like to share? Leave a note in the comment section below!

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Comments

Thanks for your honest and heartfelt podcast, Melissa! I too had a crazy busy June, with 3 out-of-town conventions, prep in between, and a couple of commercial assignments. Just bananas! So when it was time to rush off on vacation a couple of days after getting back from a convention, and I had a meltdown with my wife over finding a parking spot (which was super hard to bounce back from for the rest of the day), I had to surrender to the idea that “I’m only human”. It was hard to forgive myself, easier to ask everyone around me to forgive me. Knowing that I’m not alone in my wigged-out reaction to stress, and that part of the process is just realizing that “the struggle is real”, helps me treat myself with self-compassion. So, amen, sister! (I’ve taken a few days to treat myself gently, relax after the vacation, and now I’m ready to enter the studio again.)